The market for goods, perpetuated by the globalization of the world's economy, has become more and more competitive. Consequently, salespeople are faced with stiffer competition for the products they sell. Typically, a salesperson covers a specific territory and handles a specific product line. Appropriate customers located in that territory are often visited by many different salespeople representing similar products. Therefore, the efficient use of a salesperson's time can often mean the difference between meeting quotas and falling short of sales goals.
A salesperson usually schedules appointments with customers for a specific time and day. For a salesperson with a large territory, planning a set of appointments to maximize his sales effort is often a difficult task. Typically, the salesperson makes telephone calls to customers and potential customers in a specific area to determine if they are available for a visit during the time period the salesperson has set aside. Those customers that are available are scheduled manually by the salesperson, and those that are not available must wait until the salesperson visits that area again. Preparing a schedule of sales appointments can be difficult because customers are often only available during specific periods of time. To fit a list of ten or twenty customers into an appointment schedule manually can be an intimidating task.
With the advent of electronic calendars, PDAs, and cellular telephones, a salesperson can more easily plan and execute a sales trip to visit multiple customers. However, the planning process, while enhanced by these electronic tools, is usually done manually by an individual salesperson. This manual planning of appointments not only takes up valuable time, but also results in inefficient use of sales efforts. Often, a salesperson does not use the proper criteria in planning a sales trip, instead focusing on factors such as convenience. Moreover, information about customers and prior sales trips is not utilized properly to plan efficient sales efforts. It is difficult to monitor and track the information that is obtained from customers during sales visits. Often, different salespeople with different information do not communicate effectively to plan effective sales trips. As a result, sales efforts are not efficiently planned.